The Slayers of Dune Book II: The Blood Storm
by MrPointy2
Summary: The Senior Partners conspire to eradicate the Slayers of Dune.
1. Chapter 1

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

There is no guilt or innocence in you. All of that is past. Guilt belabors the dead and I am not the Iron Hammer. You multitude of the dead are merely people who have done certain things, and the memory of those things illuminates my path.

Leto II to His Memory-Lives After Harq al-Ada

They didn't need a cage this time.

The ritual of resurrection had not been performed for over ten thousand years as time passed in this universe. The last time it was used six vampires were sacrificed and the terrible creature they brought back had to be held in a locked metal box. The Senior Partner had better plans thanks to the ingenious humans that had come to infest the galaxy.

An ancient monster with the ability to see the future would be resurrected and trained in the ways of the Bene Gesserit for the express purpose of hunting down and killing that bastard slayer child.

The Senior Partner stood on a hillside near a stone plateau on Gammu. Light years away, on Arrakis, the slayer-witch Motorria was nearing term. There was no way he could prevent the bastard offspring of Paul Muad'dib and Buffy Summers from being born. But he was fairly sure he could kill it.

They finished the invocation of the darkness.

The Bene Gesserit vampires he had guided and trained over the last few months had remembered enough of the ancient spell to return their chosen monster to the land of the living. They finished speaking the ancient Latin and from the stone stage they occupied there came swirling smoke and a flash of blue light.

The Bene Gesserit vampires flinched, and backed away from the thing they had made. It growled at them. Its feral yellow eyes stared up at the night sky and knew something was wrong. There was drool forming at the side of its mouth. The creature drew itself to full height. It stood near six feet tall. Its hands held razor sharp nails. Its body was firm and naked.

The Bene Gesserit vampires were a moment too slow.

The creature they had summoned tore into them like a ravenous wolf. It killed two of them by tearing their throats open. The third, it killed by slamming it to the ground and draining its blood in less than three seconds.

The Senior Partner smiled. She was a beautiful monster. The Senior Partner waived his hand invoking a mystical shield. The monster they had summoned would not be escaping the compound. He motioned to the other Bene Gesserit near him. They knew their mission. They were to train the creature in the ways of the Bene Gesserit; they were to convert the beast into a Reverend Mother. At their feet, were sacks of black spice. By magic, the Senior Partner had transformed the generic spice of Arrakis into something else entirely. Spice permitted humans to extend their lives and people like Paul Muad'dib to see the future, to transcend the limits of time. The black spice would have the same and greater effect on the undead. The monster before him would be like nothing any slayer had ever seen. Its innate gift of the sight would be amplified a million fold. It's strength would rival the Old One's

The Senior Partner stepped back and invoked the final spell. The entire planet of Gammu underwent temporal acceleration. One hundred years would pass here while only a month would pass for the universe outside.

"Welcome back Drusilla." The Senior Partner thought. Around him, the Bene Gesserit formed themselves into packs to hunt down and capture the beast.

They would be a long time training it.

As the decades wore on, the Senior Partner became more and more convinced that these creatures of magic had to go. Vampires, demons and slayers, were all symptoms of a disease that infected the universe, a disease that stemmed directly from The Destroyer. In the time between the creation of the universe by the arrival of the Destroyer and the arrival of the Old Ones to distant worlds life had sprung up, had naturally evolved from the dirt and oceans on a billion worlds.

The Senior Partners were the original inhabitants of the galaxy. They were here millions of years before the Old Ones had crawled down from the sky. It was the species of the Senior Partners that had taught the Old Ones politics and science, and how to build the mystical weapons and encouraged them to rise up against the Destroyer.

They had corrupted the angels of heaven. And why shouldn't they? This galaxy was theirs and they would have it back. The Old Ones had failed in their rebellion against the Destroyer.

The Senior Partner vowed he would not. He would see the Destroyer destroyed and his slayers wiped out of existence.


	2. Chapter 2

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

_Nothing surpasses the complexity of the human mind._

-Leto II: Dar-es-Balat Records

The desert air was hot and dry this morning as it was every morning since Spike had altered the planet's ecosystem thousands of years ago. The first reddish orange light of the new Arrakis day lit the distant sand dunes officially ending the reign of the night watch. From within Sietch Kindle, the slayers began to stir.

Motorria unfurled herself from her sleeping pouch as she rose to meet the new day. She yawned and stretched and then slowly made her way to her feet. Around her hundreds of other people were stirring to life. A great many of them were slayers also.

Motorria looked to her left, then right. Lisa and Reverend Mother Bastra were still asleep.

"Great security." Motorria thought sarcastically to herself. She holstered the polished ebony stake that had been used by her future son to kill a vampire right here in the sietch. She was holding it for him. She would give it back to him when he was old enough to use it properly.

"Of course, I'll probability will be the one that trains him to use it." She thought.

Motorria watched the slayers stir and thought of Surayya who had disappeared a few days ago with Illyria. When they got back from wherever they went she was going to give them both a piece of her mind.

"That girl has gotten more impulsive than ever." Motorria thought about Surayya. She loved her friend dearly. She had known Surayya for most of her life. But she knew that once Surayya had her teeth in something she focused in on it to the exclusion of everything and everyone else.

"Just left Madonna and child stumbling about in the desert." Motorria smiled to herself at the image. She was glad Lisa had finally showed up.

The events of yesterday still haunted her. Upon their arrival at sietch Kindle she had been attacked by a newborn slayer. Seems they had forgotten all about the new slayers that had been born during the chaos of the last three years. And then to make the weird totally strange, her son had shown up, from the future no less, and killed a vampire. Afterwards, she had ordered everyone out of the cave and into the Arrakis sunlight without a stillsuit. They killed two more vampires that way.

Apparently, vampires were using stillsuits to move around during the daylight right under the slayer noses. Things were far worse than they had realized. She remembered what she saw through the portal that had delivered her son. She saw the sands of Arrakis covered with millions of Turok-Han and a sky the color of blood and fire.

When her son had appeared, everyone looked at her with awe and fear. They had no idea what she was carrying. They knew the damage that had been done to humankind the last time an Atreides was born on Arrakis. Motorria felt slightly overwhelmed and afraid. She had no idea what she was carrying either other than the fact that she knew it was a boy and that she loved him. Motorria rubbed her belly. The baby had been quiet all night. Usually he would start to kick just before dawn but today he was quiet.

"The kid's probably still in shock from that run in with his future self." Motorria thought as she made her way towards the central eating area.

Motorria remembered growing up on Arrakis. Her mother was a fish speaker in the imperial guard. Her father was a hydroponics engineer in the reclamation corps. She grew up in one of the dozen Fish Speaker warrens that lined the outskirts of the Arrakis capital city which now lay in ruins after a biological attack on the church of universal light by the Bene Gesserit. Motorria resisted the urge to get her scythe and very calmly and very deliberately walk over to reverend mother Bastra and cut her head off, slowly. She smiled.

"I'm getting bloodthirsty in my old age." Motorria thought to herself. She was only twenty six years old.

When she was a kid, she and Surayya use to hunt sand vipers at the edge of the desert for fun. One afternoon, they had chased a bunch of sand vipers into a shallow pit they had dug. They wanted to roast them later. Vipers tasted great with peppers and salt. Motorria remembered how hot it was that day. She and Surayya were covered with dirt and sweat when her mother came to her with a weird sad look on her face.

Leto had demanded that the daughters of the Fish Speakers be brought to him to be activated in something called the slayer program. Motorria had not seen her mother since then. She often wondered how her family was doing. She often cried when she imagined them killed by the biological weapon that had wiped out capital city.

She was Bene Gesserit so she prioritized.

"Step one, save the world. Step two, call mom" She thought.

Motorria rubbed her belly and understood at that moment that there was the possibility that she may not be able to spend very much time with her son if his future war occurred.

"So much depends on us slayers." She thought. "We really are the only thing between the golden path and eternal darkness." Motorria rested a moment as she felt the weight of her years come upon her.

There was a commotion near the mouth of the cave. The "Sietch Tabr" was landing. The stubby winged craft kicked up a cloud of dust as its whining engines died down. The door to the ship opened. Surayya walked out followed by Buffy Summers.

Motorria was struck with awe and surprise. The last time she had seen Buffy was aboard "Her Graceful Measure" right after they had released the Destroyer. They had returned Buffy back to the Sunnydale of over ten thousand years ago where she lived out a full life and then died of old age.

"That girl just won't stay dead." Motorria thought. As Buffy and Surayya approached the sietch, the baby began to kick.

Motorria noticed the white skin tight suit Buffy wore then noticed that the white suit was her skin. She had the same outfit as Illyria who was an Old One of incredible power. Speaking of Illyria, where was she? She was with Surayya when they disappeared into the night together. Motorria noticed the dried blood on Buffy's white suit. She remembered the light show a few nights ago and the sound of distant thunder echoing through the planet.

"Illyria's dead." She understood that as a flat fact. The part that freaked her out was the obvious conclusion. "Buffy killed her with her bare hands."

She lumbered forward and she thought to herself "Our lives are not like other people lives." She went forward to meet her friends.


	3. Chapter 3

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

"There is no final revelation, no final apocalypse, no answer to all questions. The more we know, the more see what we don't know. When you stand at the top of a hill you see the tops of other hills. This is the curse of intelligence. We are doomed to always question. Even more so for the Atreides.

Leto II

Notes from his final year of sand trout transformation.

She watched Surayya walk ahead of her. Buffy found the swaying of the young woman's hips mesmerizing. Beneath her stillsuit, Surayya's buttocks moved back and forth like a metronome. The movement was hypnotic. Buffy observed the girl from the future as she thought about how far her life had taken her. She used to be an air headed valley girl who spent all of her time shopping and dreaming of boys. She was pushed by Giles to become a reluctant hero and martyr. She's been a daughter, a big sister and now a mother. Buffy added up all the love from all the people she knew and subtracted all the pain she had to pay and came to a conclusion. She knew she had a wonderful life.

Buffy entered the sietch. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness of the cave. Here and there was the white soft light of the glow globes. Buffy scanned the cave. Hundreds of people were moving about the business of their lives. Buffy could feel the buzzing of the energy from the other slayers in the sietch and the singular energy of one slayer in particular. She spotted Motorria standing near the entrance of the sietch.

All of her fears disappeared as soon as she saw the pregnant slayer. Her burning anxieties were replaced with a cool joy.

Surayya walked up to Motorria and hugged her greatly. After a moment she moved away leaving Motorria and Buffy staring at each other face to face.

Buffy watched the girl watch her. She could see the intense analysis Motorria was performing as her eyes scanned over her. Buffy could tell by the expression on her face that Motorria was constructing and discarding hundreds of scenario's every second. Buffy took the last step that separated them. She took Motorrias' right hand in both of hers and warmly squeezed it.

"Hi, I'm Buffy Summers." She said. Can we talk?"

Motorria smiled as she returned the squeeze of Buffy's hands. Within her, the baby kicked with joy.

"Another day, another horrible monster to kill." Surayya thought. In the desert, right after the death of Illyria, Surayya felt a slayer die. She felt her connection to the Destroyer become super charged and then a fire hose of mystical energy flow through her. It was only after she was able to access the communications gear aboard "The Sietch Tabr" that she could confirm what she felt. On the other side of the planet, the church of universal light had been attacked by vampires. It would be hours before the Fish Speakers would have a full report. The only thing Surayya knew for certain was that the slayer Lucilla was dead. She had tapped into the energies of the amulet Spike wore at the battle of Sunnydale and siphoned off huge amounts of that energy _in real time. _Every witness to the event claims that Lucilla became a supernova. In one brilliant burst, she had wiped out hundreds of vampires and incinerated herself in the process. The Church of Universal Light was calling it a miracle and even now was pushing to have her elevated to sainthood. Even the place where she had burned the world was being enshrined as a holy place.

"Perhaps she is a saint." Surayya thought. "The girl did sacrifice herself for the greater good." Surayya removed the rest of her stillsuit. Her dark skin was sweaty and covered with grime. Soft firm muscles rippled across her flat stomach. Surayya stripped down to her underwear. She changed out of them quickly and into a fresh pair. No one in the sietch noticed. The fremen here had no silly body taboos. Surayya finished dressing in her black flowing aba robe. Her mind refused to let go of the recent events in the desert.

She remembered agreeing with Buffy to locate her son. They were about to start out to sietch Kindle when she felt a part of herself open up to the Destroyer. The mystical energies Leto had used to activate his slayers originated from the Destroyer billions of years ago. He still had access and control of those energies. The amulet was connected to Spike. Spike was connected to Surayya. The Destroyer used himself as a router. He created a mystical bridge between Surayya and Lucilla.

The connection was two way.

When the Destroyer had created a connection between her and Lucilla time had opened for her. She saw the sands of Arrakis covered with billions of turok-han. They covered the world like an army of ants killing everything and everyone in their path.

Blood-Storm is what she called it. Surayya had no idea where that word came from. She felt tired and energized at the same time. She sat on a stone bench carved from the wall of the cave and lost herself in her own thoughts.

The two women couldn't have looked more different. Motorria was olive skinned and pudgy long before her pregnancy. She wore dark colors that hid her figure. Her face was round and her eyes were clear and open to everything she saw. Motorria wore her dark brown hair tied back into a bun. She had began to grow it back long after wearing it short during the three years she had spent trapped on Arrakis during the Fish Speaker occupation after the destruction of the "Leit-Kynes."

Buffy was fair skinned with shiny blond hair. She had a short pug nose and dark green eyes. She looked like a young woman of twenty years or so but her body language was as one much older. Buffy wore a one piece white leatherette body suit similar but different than the one worn by Illyria. The two women looked at each other a long time before they decided to speak.

"When Sineya asked me to do this, she said it was for the greater good." Motorria blurted out. "Leto, the one who activated us, bred humans for thousands of years, creating in us the ability to cooperate, to live instinctively as an ecosystem. He called this the golden path. He never knew that the world had a supernatural aspect to it as well." Motorria paused to give Buffy time to absorb this strange new information. Motorria observed Buffy in the Bene Gesserit way that was taught to her by Leto. She could tell Buffy didn't care about the 'why' of what she had done. She could tell that Buffy was only interested in the 'what'.

"What has the Destroyer shown her?" Motorria thought. "Something else is going on here. This is not all about the boy."

"How is he?" Buffy asked. "Is he in your dreams too?"

"Yes, I see a small boy with dark hair and blue within blue eyes" Motorria answered.

"May I?" Buffy asked as she tenderly held out a hand.

"Yes." Motorria said.

Buffy ran the palm of her hand over Motorria's belly. She could feel the baby kick. That tiny movement produced the greatest joy Buffy had ever known in her life. Buffy placed her hand to her face as she failed to hold back tears of joy. It was real now. She had driven across the expanse of her whole life to get to this moment. Her son would be born soon and they would be together.

"All I want is what's best for him." Buffy said.

"I know." Motorria answered. "We'll work together to do what's best."

Neither of them mentioned the oncoming storm.


	4. Chapter 4

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

A pillar of smoke by day, a column of fire by night, ten billion names, an infinite number of faces, a trillion galaxies floating in the darkness. This is the nature of the divine. It is all of us.

Answer of the Sufi Master when asked

"Where is God?"

The sky was black.

The Senior Partner stood under the pitch black sky and reviewed the works of his hands one last time. One hundred years had passed locally here on the planet of Gammu while for the rest of the universe not even a full month had passed.

The monster he had resurrected was coming along well. The vampire Drusilla was now fluent in the ways of the Bene Gesserit. She had all the skills and powers of a full Reverend Mother plus her vampire strength and speed. Yet, she still had a central flaw. She could still be killed by simple sunlight. The senior partner took care of that. Since, tonight was her graduation ceremony, of sorts; he had a present for her. The senior partner had taken the Gem of Amara from the pile of ashes that was formally Reverend Mother Nisa. He was going to give it to her. Drusilla floated in out of the darkness and into the yellow white light of his camp. She was not wearing her vamp face. She looked like a young woman of twenty or so years. Her skin was fair, her hair was black and her eyes were the strangest blue within blue.

Drusilla extended her hand as she gleefully looked at the shiny ring.

"Mine?" She asked and giggled. The Senior Partner slipped the ring on her finger.

During the near century that they had been training her, Drusilla had become quite good at accessing her preborn memories. She remembered her time as a young girl, she remembered being murdered by Angelus and Darla but from that vortex of memories something else emerged. Vampires are influenced by the flesh they wear. They take on the memories of the cells they animate. As a Bene Gesserit she had access to thousands of life time's worth of memories and experiences. The demon inside became smarter, more discerning. It looked back at the brutal and bloody murders it had committed and found them tacky. It still enjoyed killing, but now it had taste. Something else had changed as well. Her mind was clearer and more focused. She rarely babbled most of the things she said made sense now. Her access to her genetic memories had revealed a surprise that not even the Senior Partner had anticipated.

She always knew her sight; her visions were meant for something larger, something important. She was killed by Angelus before she could come into her full power.

Drusilla's power was this, she could see the future without the need for spice. This was the power she was originally designed for. Because of her murder, the power behind her visions had to find other ways to create a Kwisatz Haderach. So it got Spike to alter Arrakis and create spice, which allowed the adept to see the future, but that didn't change the true importance of Drusilla.

She was originally intended to be the source of the Arteries blood line.

And now her ancient memories were alive within her and screaming for their original purpose to be fulfilled.

Drusilla looked through time, to the future, and saw the boy sitting on a rock at the deserts edge. His stillsuit was covered in dust. His face was exposed revealing his raven black hair, round face and blue within blue eyes. He turned his head and stared directly at her.

"I see you." He said.

The vision collapsed. Drusilla turned her mind to the plan she had been hatching for the better part of her last hundred years.

"The king wants his presents, but it's not his birthday today." She said.

The Senior Partner looked puzzled. Drusilla swiped the razor sharp tips of her fingernails across the Senior Partner's jugular vein. A fountain of blood spurted outward hitting her in the face. Drusilla ran her tongue over her lips to get a taste.

"You taste like ash and dying." She said with a little girl's glee.

The Senior Partner bled out in less than a minute. Drusilla stepped over his dead body and into the space ship that was waiting for her. Originally she was resurrected to hunt down the slayer child and kill him but her genetic memories demanded something else. She would keep him alive, train him as she saw fit and use him to found a new blood line and when she was sure the _proper_ Arteries blood line had been established she would turn him into a dark immortal.

The galaxy would have a second emperor.

"We just go on." Holland Manners had told Angel tens of thousands of years ago which was true. The Senior Partner simply possessed a nearby demon to regain a corporal form. He looked at the dead body he had just worn.

"The last time I was killed by a vampire was during the seventy-five year review of the Earth branch of Wolfram and Hart. Why are vampires always trying to kill me?" He asked himself.

A moment later his rage kicked in.

If his thoughts could be understood by a human the closest translation would be been:

"I have had enough of this s**t!"

In his rage he was beyond subtly, beyond nuance, beyond secret plans and wheels with wheels. He simply pulled the trigger on the deadly spell. He couldn't wait to watch the humans' burn.

Tens of light years away, on the planet of Arrakis deep within the northern polar caps a portal opened. It was a dimensional rift that connected this world to the next. Mystical energies opened that which had been closed for thousands of years. The Hellmouth opened and a billion years of darkness poured out.

The blood storm had begun.


	5. Chapter 5

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**There is no escape — we pay for the violence of our ancestors.**

Paul Muad'Dib

The baby started kicking like crazy. Motorria rubbed her belly attempting to soothe him. Buffy noticed the slayers face grimacing in discomfort.

"Something just set him off." Motorria said more to herself than to anyone seated at the conference. Surayya had called a staff meeting to catch up on current events. Everyone sat in a circle which by now was quite large. The meeting was open to anyone who wanted to attend. People were still creeping into the meeting in groups of twos and threes. All of the sietch slayers were present including the new slayers born from the slayers killed at Tailos Three. The core group of Motorria, Surayya, Buffy, Lisa and Reverend Mother Bastra sat in the inner circle.

New friends of Surayya peeked shyly at Buffy and the other slayers. There was one man in particular, named Amir, who just stared at Buffy as if trying to memorize her face. Surayya kept referring to him as "The Owl."

Motorria watched the new slayers with interest. She watched one slayer in particular. She watched the slayer named Aailayah. The girl had dark eyes, raven black hair and a round face. She reminded Motorria so much of a younger Surayya.

"Younger?" Motorria laughed to herself. "We've only been slayers for three and a half years. Saving the world is making us old." Motorria looked at Surayya and observed her in the Bene Gesserit way. Surayya's body language was truncated and precise. She was very efficient in her use of hand gestures and body movement. It was almost as if she was still in the cramped spaces of her flagship "Memories of Dawn." Motorria ran her eyes over Surayya's face. She could easily see the beginnings of crow's feet at the edges of her eyes.

"We've only been slayers for three and a half years!" Motorria thought. "It's not fair! While we save the world, who will save us?"

Motorria felt Buffy's hand on hers. Buffy's hand was warm, soft and strong. She turned and saw Buffy's smiling face. She didn't have to say a word. Buffy understood perfectly. Buffy only made one cryptic remark.

"Believe me, there were plenty of times I felt like I was drowning. Sometimes you just got to push through and aim for the best." Buffy smiled.

Motorria returned Buffy's grasp. Buffy had understood her fears completely. They turned their attention back to the meeting.

"For those of you that don't know," Surayya was saying as she pointed towards Amir and the new people that had taken the "Sietch Tabr" down to meet them in the desert after Buffy had defeated Illyria. "this is the new "scoobies"." Buffy's head shot up. Surayya gave her a brief glance.

"Of course, they're not the original scoobies. But thousands of years ago, after the slayers had disappeared after the last great Slayer-Vampire war humans took it upon themselves to fight the forces of darkness. Armed with nothing more than grit, determination, deep pockets and an impressive arsenal _mere_ humans took it upon themselves to stand against the forces of evil."

"Well done." Surayya said as she began to clap. Soon the whole sietch joined in. Amir blushed and took a bow. "Of course, they're stuck in their ways. They refuse to believe that the demon age is over. They refuse to believe that a new, better age is upon us." Surayya spoke directly to Amir. There was no harshness in her voice only a gentle chiding. She wanted to educate him not alienate him. Besides, she still felt a powerful attraction towards him. She had plans for him for later.

"Am I crazy, or is that guy the splitting image of Xander Harris?" Buffy whispered to Motorria.

"He's a genetic reincarnation. Probably, Xander's great to the nth power descendant." Motorria answered

Buffy felt his warm brown eyes gazing over her body. Long buried impulses she had towards Xander resurfaced. This was her second life now. She could operate here with a new found freedom she could never have in Sunnydale. Without realizing it, she started grooming herself by brushing her blonde hair off of her shoulders.

Motorria noted Buffy's reactions to Amir. She had also observed Surayya's reaction to the man as well.

"Twenty million years out of the jungle and nothing has changed." Motorria thought and then she smiled. "At least humans are consistent. I don't think Leto truly apprenticed that fact." Thoughts of the God-Emperor's breeding plans brought her mind back to the child within her.

"What are you?" She asked rhetorically as she rubbed her belly. "You're part Muad'dib and part Buffy. Why would the Destroyer order your creation?

As if on cue, Surayya began to talk about her conversation with the Destroyer. She paused a moment like the television announcers of old and then pointed at the young blond slayer sitting in the inner circle.

"For those of you who don't know, we have an honored guest." Surayya pointed at Buffy. "This is Buffy Summers, the slayer that changed everything." People begin to clap. Buffy bowed from her sitting position.

"Because of her, we all exist at the same time. She had the imagination to dream of a new mode of being and the courage to see it through." Surayya said.

"Not to mention the dumb luck of not getting killed too many times in the process." Buffy muttered. Surayya heard her and smiled,

"Motorria carries a child conceived from the genes of Paul Muad'dib and Buffy Summers." Surayya said. At the mention of Paul's name several fremen used their fingers to make signs to ward off evil. To mention the name of the dead is to invoke the dead.

"Slayers are invisible to any that can see the future. That's one reason Leto never knew he already had slayers on Arrakis at sietch kindle. Buffy has encountered future slayers several times but retained no memories of them because slayers cannot even see themselves in the future but the Destroyer changed all that. He awakened Buffy's memories of the future, all of them." The sietch went quiet as everyone thought about what she had said.

"Including the memories of the child Sineya ordered to be created." Everyone looked at Motorria.

"The boy will be a Kwisatz Haderach." Surayya said flatly. The crowd gasped. The Kwisatz Haderach was a creature out of myth and legend. It was a creature that could bridge higher spatial dimensions. It could bridge the past present and future.

The last time a Kwisatz Haderach had been released upon the world the galaxy had been changed.

"The child will also contain slayer gene markers." Surayya continued. "He will be able to locate and connect to all the slayers, past present and future." Surayya gave them a moment to meditate on that fact.

"The Destroyer has presented us with an opportunity to create a slayer bloodline. That's why the child is male. It wants the entire human race to share in his power."

There was rumbling's throughout the sietch. Many did not consider this good news. They were just free of Leto the tyrant, now from the sounds of it there was another tyrant on the way.

"But that's not all." Surayya prepared to say. She was about to discuss her vision of the blood storm when a young technician interrupted her from the back of the cave.

"Ma'am." The young slayer said. She looked small and scared. She was all of sixteen.

"Yes." Surayya answered. This must be important for someone to interrupt her.

"It's fish speaker command." She said in a high voice. "They report that some type of fissure has opened near the north polar region…"

"A Hellmouth." Surayya thought to herself. "So, it has begun."

"They say that thousands, no millions of demons are pouring out of it. There are over one hundred thousand causalities so far." She said. "The Fish Speakers are asking for our help."

Surayya looked at Motorria, Lisa and Buffy. They were the only experienced slayers she had. There was also the new slayers but they were untrained and of course Amir and the new scoobies."

"This doesn't come as a shock to me." Surayya said in her best command voice. "This is what I saw in the desert when the slayer Lucillia died. This is the blood storm." Surayya looked around the cave. Her command experience taught her to always be sensitive to the morale of the troops.

"I've run multiple scenarios' in my head over the last day. I believe we can fix this. I believe we have all the help needed to close the Hellmouth."

Surayya heard a noise.

Near the back of the sietch, near the entrance, a tall woman moved like lightening. With her bare hands she snapped the neck of the nearest slayer then drained the blood of another in less than two seconds. The woman held something in her hand that resembled ridged blade.

She took off her stillsuit mask. Buffy recognized her instantly.

"Oh dearie, you're going to need a lot more help than that." She said in a marked english accent.

It was Drusilla.

Buffy was on her feet by reflex. A bolt of energy shot from her hand and blasted into Drusilla hitting her dead center. Everyone jumped away from the energy impact. Smoke curled off the remains of her stillsuit as Drusilla returned to her feet and drew herself to full height. Her brow was ridged. Her eyes were yellow. She wore he demon face. The slayer Aailayah charged in from the side. Both Surayya and Motorria recognized how Drusilla moved.

She moved like Bene Gesserit.

"No!" Surayya screamed at Aailayah but it was too late. The slayers attack was clumsy. Drusilla reached out and grabbed her by the throat without even looking at her. She clinched her hand driving her nails into the slayers trachea and ripped out her throat.

Aailayah bled out as she hit the ground.

"The Atreides boy belongs to me." She growled. "I will have my blood-line."

They all knew she was talking about Motorria's child.


	6. Chapter 6

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

"Vampires are creeps."  
"Yes, that's why one slays them."

- Buffy and Giles season 2 episode 11 "Ted"

Quickly they spread out around Drusilla to block her escape. Buffy lead the attack. She was amazed and pissed at the same time. Drusilla was here of all places! Was there a sale at "skanks are us? Or what?" Buffy stood before Drusilla with her scythe held tightly in her hand. Her body was tense. It kept every ounce of restraint for her not to jump on Drusilla and tear her apart with her bare hands. She had seen the death Drusilla had wrought here. She did not want any more of the women here to die. The bloody corpse of Aailayah still lay at Drusilla's feet.

"Slayers die so easily. They tear like pink tissue paper." Drusilla said in a high lilting tone. Her eyes drifted off into her own private space.

"Apparently, hell has an early release program." Buffy said mockingly as she eased herself to within striking position of Drusilla. "So Dru, other than baby fever, what brings you to Arrakis?"

Drusilla watched the slayers spread out before her and was not intimated by them. She had a hundred years of battle experience on Gammu. The Senior Partner had trained her well. She had already mapped several ways out of the sietch.

Drusilla remembered Buffy from her past life. She remembered all the trouble she and the bad angel had caused her. She remembered being murdered by Buffy's lover. She remembered the great love of her life seduced away from her by the blonde slayer. Drusilla resisted the urge to hate her. She would kill Buffy slowly and without passion.

Drusilla had other memories, deeper memories hidden in the flesh she wore. Within her were the lives of all of her female ancestors. She could hear them in her head. She could hear the clamoring of voices from the thousands of women living within her. She could see the grand pattern of their lives and the invisible hand guiding the evolution of her bloodline. Like an ancient device long unplugged and left in a dusty corner for thousands of years, once awaked the ancient power guiding the evolution of her bloodline demanded the breeding plan be resumed.

She was the intended progenitor of the Arteries. She would recapture her cheated destiny.

All this flashed through her head in a moment.

"Good. Buffy has eased herself to within striking distance." She thought. Drusilla had seen this moment many times during her flight from Gammu. Her prescient vision had shown her this moment. The Senior Partner had saturated every cell of her body with the black spice. She could now call her visions at will.

"I want to see the kitty dance." Drusilla said as she launched herself at Buffy. Drusilla's elbow slammed into Buffy's face as her full weight came down on her. Metal flashed as a serrated blade ripped across Buffy's throat. Warm blood flew everywhere. Yellow white light rippled across Buffy's throat instantly healing the wound. Buffy lunged to her feet. She glared at Drusilla.

"Upgrades." Buffy said flatly in response to Drusilla's puzzled expression. "Deluxe package."

Drusilla had the information she had come for. Her vision was correct. Buffy was now an immortal slayer. Drusilla backed away and smiled.

"Sometimes sweetheart, it's not all about you." Drusilla said then paused for a moment. "And sometimes it is." Drusilla scanned over the slayer crowd until she spotted Surayya.

"Your name is a lie." Drusilla screamed directly to her. "I will create the real Atreides!"

The crowd whispered in hushed voices. Drusilla shifted her eyes to stare directly at Motorria. She decided to let her be for now. In all of her visions, she saw Motorria setting her on fire with her magics.

Drusilla gave them no time to consider her statement.

"I give you two choices. One, I leave now, unmolested or two, I kill you all and then leave." She said.

Wordlessly, the line of slayers parted. Drusilla left them. Once in the ship she stole from Gammu she rocketed upward and was quickly lost in the clear blue Arrakis sky.

Buffy stood a moment stunned and thought to herself about Drusilla. "Still crazy after all these years…"

Surayya gently tapped Buffy on the arm.

"We can figure this out once we're in the air. We've got a Hellmouth to close." Surayya looked intense and focused. She was back to her old command form.

"Lisa and Bastra are going to stay here with Motorria. You and the scoobies are coming with me." She said.

"Why did Drusilla speak to you that way, and what did she mean by creating the _true_ Atreides?" Buffy asked puzzled.

"I carry the Atreides blood and name. But it may be all a lie." Surayya said grimly. She had done the probability calculations in her head just now in the mentat way. "All things considered, there is a very strong chance that Drusilla is right. She was supposed to start the Atreides blood-line. Angelus killed her before she had a chance. One blood-line was destroyed and another got a chance to fill that empty space like in a ecosystem when a species dies out. So ten thousand years later here we are." Surayya said as a matter of fact. "An ancient memory had awakened and has been given form. I feel sorry for her. "

"Screw that!" Buffy said. "I'm going to kill the bitch! I'm going to cut her head off, then burn her body then spit on her ashes, then burn those ashes, then …"

They both stopped and stared at the bloodied body of the slayer that blocked the path to the exit. They paused a moment to bury their dead.

The "Sietch Tabr" flew out of the darkness.

High in orbit the small scout ship came over the terminator that line where day turned into night as the planet turned. Surayya watched Arrakis turn under her as she viewed the planet from the clear plaz port. Dawn broke over the northern polar region revealing a huge black spot that appeared to be eating away at the planet.

"See that?" Surayya said to the young woman at the command console.

"On screen now, ma'am" The young woman said.

On a huge high definition monitor a shockingly clear image appeared. The black spot on Arrakis was covered in thousands of tiny dots. The dots were demons escaping from the Hellmouth. At the perimeter of the black spot, were intermittent flashes of light from high yield explosives.

The Fish Speakers were fighting the good fight.

"So this is your plan?" Buffy asked. She had been standing by the captains' chair the whole flight talking to Surayya. Buffy held a vile of blood in her hand. Surayya had ordered the ship's doctor to remove four viles of blood from her and place them into an air tight container.

"Tell me your plan again." Buffy said to Surayya. Surayya told her.

Buffy shook her head. "You're crazy." She said and then, after a moment. "But, you're _slayer_ crazy. That I like."

Surayya was about to respond when the entire screen when white for a moment. When the light faded the sands of Arrakis were scorched. Nothing moved near the hell mouth

"The Fish Speakers do love their atomics." Surayya said.

They critically watched the screen. For long minutes noting moved near the hell mouth, then out of the darkness came thick tentacles kilometers wide. Something huge was clawing its way out of the darkness.

"Time for plan B." Surayya said. "Buffy, take the rest of the fleet down. Assist the Fish Speakers. Amir, you're with me."

"You're not the boss of me." Buffy said.

Surayya looked at Buffy and smiled. She said, "I'm the boss of everybody." Surayya grabbed her viles of blood with one hand and Amir with the other.

She disappeared in a flash of light.

"That girl's got to teach me how to do that." Buffy thought as she ordered the ship and the rest of the Scooby fleet to follow her down to Arrakis.


	7. Chapter 7

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

Paul Muad'dib, Leto the Second, these were great men who wrapped the mantle of religion around themselves as they established what was essentially a secular rule. They used the image and the fear of God to promote a secular agenda. Paul did it to acquire the throne; Leto did it to reengineer the human race. The question neither of them bothered to ask was "What would the _real_ God think of this?"

Sufi Summations

IX Translation

They watched from the darkness.

From the planet and the nearby space beyond, an army of tiny machines, surveillance devices manufactured and deployed from the techno planet of IX, observed and transmitted the unfolding events on Arrakis.

No sooner had they had heard of the violent death of Leto the second, years ago, they deployed nano machines to watch over the desert planet. What they reveled now stunned them beyond belief and more than justified their use.

The planet Richese was supreme in machine culture. Long before the rise of House Atreides, they had well mapped and explored the boundaries of technology. They made terrible weapons in secret for the great houses and even a few tools for the great emperor Leto.

The Senior Partner sat in an overstuffed faux leather chair at a thick shiny silver table made from the hull plating of an Imperial battleship destroyed by a ixian mine. He sat with his project engineers in the huge room monitoring the hundreds of live video feeds from Arrakis. He came here to gloat over what his technology had wrought.

The Hellmouth had opened well on Arrakis. So far, millions of demons had poured out of it. He knew that within days they would kill everything on the surface of the planet with the exception of the Destroyer.

"The Destroyer." The Senior Partner thought. "That's what the humans call it." The Senior Partners knew it by another name. "Ta'ih Musaafir" they called the creature in the old tongue meaning 'traveler."

The Senior Partner knew it would be a matter of hours now. He watched the Fish Speakers fail miserably in the use of their atomics and laughed to himself.

"They are technological barbarians." He thought to himself. The race of the Senior Partners had acquired total mastery over matter and energy hundreds of thousands of years before the Old Ones came to their worlds. The senior partners build the weapons used by the Old Ones to attack the Destroyer. The Old Ones failed. Since then, the Senior Partners had a million years to get it right. He was convinced they would get it right this time.

They would destroy the Destroyer and be free of the abomination called magic. The Senior Partners had a supreme faith in their technology. They believed in the value of order and structure and would not have the chaos of the divine in their presence.

The Senior Partner watched the screens and watched his plan unfold. Everything was proceeding as he had planned. He was not expecting any surprises. He had forgotten all about Drusilla.

"Go! Go! Go!" Arshia screamed from the troop carrier as dozens of armed _scoobies _launched themselves into the desert sands of Arrakis. They were only a few hundred meters away from the black portal that was the Hellmouth. The same scene was being repeated at dozens of points along the circumference of the Hellmouth. Arshia dumped the last of her troops along the perimeter then ordered the troop carrier to resume orbit fifteen hundred meters above the Hellmouth. Arshia was the supreme commander of the human resistance against the supernatural. She found the name _scoobies_ to be trite.

She returned to the command center to monitor the battle. Buffy had landed with her troops near the eastern edge of the Hellmouth. Surayya had just disappeared from the "Sietch Tabr" with her favorite commander leaving behind cryptic commands.

"Contain as many demons as you can. Let none escape. I will close the Hellmouth on my command. You have four hours." Surayya had said to the fleet before she left.

"_Four Hours!" _Arshia knew what her plan was and she could scarcely believe it. She smiled to herself. "I knew this was the dawn of the new age!" She thought to herself. "These are the slayers of old, the slayers of myth and legend." She couldn't wait to see what these women would do next.

The solider emptied two hundred rounds of 30mm shells into the swarm of demons that came at them. Green blood and organs splashed on his battle armor. Others in his troop were doing the same. The loud booming of their assault cannons were deafening. The solider ran dry. He popped the clip and inserted another thousand rounds of high velocity, teflon coated armor piercing 30mm shells.

Buffy had their backs. Occasionally, a demon would slip through and come directly at them. If she didn't cut their heads off, she would punch through their chest. The solider could swear he saw her smiling as she worked. Once, he saw her send fire from her palm and obviated a flock of _things _that came out of the sky at them.

The solider glanced at his watch. "Four hours. Surayya gave us four hours to hold the line." He thought to himself. The thump, thump, thump of the assault rifle hammered into his shoulder. "She had better get it right or we'll all going to die."

Surayya floated all alone in the vast darkness between worlds. She was in freefall, in a spacesuit, in the middle of the Atreides Oort cloud. The Oort cloud was an immense spherical cloud of asteroids that orbited every solar system. It contained bits and pieces of the planets and the moons not used during planetary formation. It contained the leftovers of creation. She was looking for a mountain to move.

"There!" She said to herself. She spotted it in the middle of the Oort cloud. It was potato shaped and solid iron. It was tens of kilometers across and kilometers long.

"Amir, do you see it too?" She asked. The telemetry from her visor was slaved to the command console of the "Sietch Tabr." Amir saw everything she saw.

"Got it." He said. Amir punched in the coordinates of the mountain floating in space.

"Reel me in." Surayya said. She took one look around. The last time she got to enjoy an extended float in space was when she was aboard the orbiting space station the "Liet-Kynes" just before it was blown into a million pieces. Minutes later she was back aboard the "Sietch Tabr". Amir made a short jump. The ship hovered only a few hundred meters above the asteroid. It took the better part of two hours for her to plant the vials of her blood at the four cardinal points of the asteroid. It took her another thirty minutes to get back to the ship.

"Punch it!" She shouted to Amir as soon as she got her helmet off. The Sietch Tabr leapt towards Arrakis at full speed. Surayya sat in the middle of the floor and began to mediate.

Unknown to them, Ixian eyes watched them from the dark.

Arshia came across the radio. "We've got a go from the "Sietch Tabr."" She said to the battle fleet on Arrakis. We've got ten minutes to clear out. All units withdraw now!" She said. Arshia motioned to the pilot of the command carrier. It began to swoop down to gather her troops. Nearly five kilometers away Buffy and her group began to fall back to the pickup point. That's when something jumped them. A creature like a tube worm, only meters wide, with serrated tentacles tore two of her troops in half. Buffy sliced into it with her scythe as tentacles exploded out of the sand and wrapped tightly around her. She couldn't move. The creature opened its wet mouth and exposed its rows of hungry teeth.

Surayya concentrated. She focused her mind on her body as her consciousness sunk through the layers of herself. Past her skin, her muscles, and into her blood her mind sank. She became sharply aware of her heart beating, of the sensual feel of her blood coursing through her veins. This was the easy part. This was her Bene Gesserit training. Next was the hard part. She engaged her mentat mind simultaneously. She began to count, inventory and store a multi-dimensional mental image of her entire blood stream. Her body knew itself. It knew the location and movement of every corpuscle in her blood. Her body knew something was missing, that the catalog of blood was incomplete. Surayya relaxed even more and released Spikes power to wander across both space and time. Leto had used the essence of Spike to create his slayers. The essence of Spike was still connected to the amulet he wore at the battle of Sunnydale. Because of the magics of that amulet the essence of Spike became a nexus between any two points in space-time. She focused her mind on the image of the asteroid she had just visited. The power within her leapt to the vials of blood she had planted on the asteroid. She had found the rest of her body, the disconnected parts of herself she had left behind. She gave the sign. They jumped into hyperspace.

The troop carrier hovered behind them. Buffy's men knew what to do. They ignored the pick-up and rushed in to save Buffy.

"Get out of here! Now!" She screamed at them. The creature had Buffy wrapped tight in its tentacles. It was dragging her to her death. "I mean it! Go!" They ignored her and started firing at the monster.

Buffy heard a sonic boom as the "Sietch Tabr" burst into the atmosphere at several hundred kilometers per second. It had dropped directly out of hyperspace on top of the Hellmouth. Buffy knew Surayya's plan and knew it was too late.

Time was up.

Surayya teleported herself to where she was right now. In her current state of mind she had a precise inventory of every cell in her body including the blood she left aboard an asteroid floating in the Oort cloud.

"Punch it!" She screamed. A fraction of a second later the asteroid slammed into the Hellmouth and unleashed a firestorm hotter than the fires of hell.

"I guess it is true." Surayya thought to herself as she viewed the swelling mushroom cloud from orbit. "I guess faith can move mountains." She thought.


	8. Chapter 8

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

He came to see Leto early that morning. This was the day Leto was going to awaken the slayers. The man appeared at the first light of dawn in a standard issue stillsuit and dark dust covered robes. "Have you seen the girls?" Leto asked. "No need, mate." Answered the man as he removed his facemask revealing a shock of blond hair and gaunt cheeks. "You're making slayers. Just more meat for the grinder. "This thing that we're going to do, if we fail then we're _all_ dead men, not just me." "I know Spike." Leto said. "These slayers are the only thing between the golden path and _real_ darkness. The world can't afford them to fail."

Extraction from "A Modern History of the Slayers."

IX Primary Data Core Edition.

Fire lit the sky.

A rouge mountain smashed into the surface of Arrakis with the force of a fifty megaton nuclear warhead. It hit dead center of the Hellmouth covering it completely. The other parts of the asteroid crumbled as it rammed into the planet stirring huge amounts of dust. Slayers teleported by magic so the thermal blast and over pressure effects from the asteroid collision were relatively weak because none of the momentum between Arrakis and the Oort cloud was preserved. Still, everything to the horizon was burned to a crisp and the sand beneath it was melted into glass.

Surayya watched the blooming mushroom cloud from orbit with trepidation.

"What have I done?" She asked herself. She watched as a thick layer of dust spread out from the impact point. It covered everything it came across.

"Commander Amir, did everyone get out in time?" She asked.

"As far as ground command can tell." He said as he listened to reports that were coming across his monitor. A name highlighted in red came across his screen.

"Ma'am."He said with a tremor in his voice. "Buffy is missing. She never made it to the rendezvous point." They looked at each other for long moments. Buffy was a slayer. She would have felt Buffy die like she felt Lucillia die.

"They found her!" Amir said excitedly. "She was less that a kilometer from the impact point. She was the only survivor of her squad."

That raised a red flag in Surayya's mind.

"I think we may have a bigger problem than the blood storm." Surayya thought. "I just dropped an asteroid on Buffy and she's still alive. Just _exactly_ what would it take to kill her?" What did the Destroyer call her?

"a _permanent_ apocalypse." were his exact words.

Surayya shivered.

If the Senior Partner had a jaw, it would have dropped. Technically, he did have a jaw, but he was too flabbergasted to speak. The damned slayers had closed the Hellmouth with one stroke! What else could these slayers do? He asked himself. And since when do slayers teleport?

He looked around the room. Everyone was staring into computer screens pouring over gigabytes of data. They were all too afraid of him to speak.

"So, we start the end game." He decided. They had successfully made the mystical weapons his species had armed the Old Ones with millions of years ago for their revolt against the Destroyer thousands of times more powerful. He would use hundreds of those weapons now.

She quietly walked into the sietch. No one paid any attention to her. She moved like any of the other slayers in sietch Kindle and to the fremen she was just _one of them._ She was tall, dark and well toned. She opened the face mask of her stillsuit to revel a face that would have been at home at any number of ancient west African tribes. She stopped a moment to scan the sietch. She spotted Motorria near the back of the cave. Sineya steeled herself as she walked up to the young slayer. In her mind, the slayers were obscenely young. She knew that they were adults as humans measured things, but to her they felt like not just like children but _her_ children. Thanks to the powers given to her by Spike, she spent a great deal of her time observing slayers throughout history. She was the ultimate voyeur. The lessons of thousands of lives were hers.

That knowledge was killing her inside. She could watch the lives of all the slayers throughout time but she could not lift one finger to help them. Now she knew how Leto II felt when he surveyed his genetic memories. Leto would often spend days reviewing the lives of his ancestors. The lives of his ancestors would teach him many valuable lessons. But they were only memories! Sineya could view the past in real time and feel the urgent compulsions of all the women born from her. She watched helplessly as the women of her bloodline died over and over again. This time she vowed she would not hold back. These slayers were alive now. She would help them. She would stand with them.

Motorria looked up as a shadow fell over her. Her eyes went wide and she gasped. Sineya was here! Motorria tried to stand out of respect. Sineya motioned her to remain seated. Lisa bowed her head in supplication at the matriarch of the slayers.

Sineya gently ran the tips of her fingers over Motorria's soft tan face.

"You're just a baby." Sineya thought to herself.

Lisa and Motorria smiled. The others in the cave were beginning to notice Sineya.

"He will be here soon." Sineya said referring to the baby. She looked at Motorria a moment. A sad strange expression came across her face. Sineya reached out and put her arms around Motorria to protect her as the ground began to rumble. Small rocks fell from the top of the cave. Outside, the sky begin to turn dark as a wave of dust from the asteroid collision came upon them at several hundred meters per second.

This was the fiercest sandstorm Arrakis had ever seen.

The rumbling increased. Motorria could feel the ground moving under her and the dreadful sound of a locomotive roaring outside the sietch. Everything went black. Later, much later, the noise stopped. Darkness still covered the world outside.

When they could speak, Motorria asked. "Why have you come great mother?"

"I've come to tell you about the days ahead. You need to know what to do after the end of the world." Sineya said. "I'm going to tell you how to live after the Destroyer and I are gone."

Motorria didn't understand. They had closed the Hellmouth. What else was there?

"And finally, I'm going to tell you about a secret power you have, a power that is beyond even the Destroyer." Sineya said.

Sineya begin to speak. She told them of what is to come and the great loss. Motorria could not hold back her tears. She gave moisture to the dead.


	9. Chapter 9

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

" There's the thing about magic. There's always consequences. Always!"

Spike,

After life S06E03

The Senior Partner watched the warheads being prepared. In a staging area on the planet Riche, he over saw the calibration and installation of hundreds of mystical weapons into missile warheads. It had been millions of years since their last assault on the Destroyer. The weapons used then were the ancestor of the weapons he used now. The first time, the Old Ones had only partially succeeded. The Destroyer was only dead for a few million years. This time, the Destroyer would be completely annihilated. Not even his atoms would survive.

"Master, it is almost done." An engineer said to him. "The mystic runes are being engraved into the warheads even as we speak."

"Excellent." The Senior Partner said. Inside, he felt very different. All the Senior Partners hated magic because magic had betrayed them. While their species were still creatures of flesh and blood, a billion years ago, the Old Ones had taught them about magic. But what they didn't teach them was that magic was a force that could alter reality and that magic had a mind of its own. For thousands of years after the Old Ones had left them to wage their war on the Destroyer, the Senior Partners practiced stronger and stronger spells. Simple things like resurrection spells and opening portals became almost second nature to them.

One day the Senior Partners, in their hubris, did a spell to move the stars themselves. That's when magic attacked them. Four planets, occupied by trillions, were burned to a crisp in a single day. Their sacred home world collapsed into a singularity. Magic had turned on them and wiped the bulk of their kind from the universe. At their height, the Senior Partners, numbered in the tens of trillions, less than a thousand of them survived that terrible day.

"Magic!" The Senior Partner thought. "Give me a simple triple redundancy hyper drive anytime. It would be much simpler."

The Senior Partners dreamed of a simpler universe ruled by what they could construct and govern. They dreamed of a universe framed only by mathematics and machines that bent to their will. To that end, they seeded the primordial seas of most of the worlds in the galaxy with gene codes that made it impossible for most evolving life to use magic. Only the rare mutation allowed a sentient being to harness that unstable power. On Earth, they called them witches and slayers. To that end, the gene codes also influenced the behavior of all developing life. It tended them towards aggression and hate.

"We're in the mind and heart of every single person on Earth." Holland Manners had once said to a vampire with a soul. He was right. The Senior Partners had engineered life to evolve that way.

Now here he was, millions of years later on an alien world battling the Destroyer for the control of the human race, and of all things, using _magic_ to destroy the source of the slayers.

The Senior Partner shook his head sadly as he waited for the weapons check to be completed.

Buffy enjoyed the feel of hot water pulsating over her naked skin. Her white battle armor had receded into her flesh leaving her pink and new. Surayya's plan had made such a mess. She had dust and rocks in crevices she didn't even want to think about. She was washing the dirt of Arrakis off of her. It took long minutes before she was spotted and picked up by a passing troop carrier. She wasn't sure how she got to where she was found or how she survived. The last thing she remembered was being dragged into the mouth of some hideous demon and then a mountain falling out of the sky. She remembered the heat and the blast wave. She remembered her skin pealing, cracking, then blown away when the shockwave hit her. She remembered looking at herself as her body was blasted into a fine powder. Then she woke up here aboard one of the _scoobies_ ship.

The Destroyer had told her. "You will become a _permanent_ apocalypse for demon kind."

That worried her _a lot. _Drusilla had called her the _immortal_ slayer. What did she know?

Buffy let the hot pulsating water pound her. She twisted under the heated stream like a very happy fish. She turned and let the water pound her from the rear. The water felt good as it heated the muscles at the small of her back just above her buttocks. She closed her eyes as a wave of ecstasy washed over her and trembled. When she opened her eyes she was surrounded by black.

Buffy floated spread eagle in a sea of stars. Below her rotated the cloud covered green brown planet IX.

"Hey Destroyer, subtle much?" She thought. This wasn't a slayer dream, a prophecy dream. This was a slayer vision. She wasn't seeing the future. She was seeing the now. The planet below her had thousands of machines in orbit and on the surface. It was a technological wonderland.

"Am I the only one getting this?" She thought to herself.

"No." Surayya answered in her mind. Buffy didn't see anyone near her but she could feel the presence of the other slayers.

"Looks like the Destroyer has called a staff meeting." Buffy said.

"Perhaps we've had this ability all along but never used it." One of the younger slayers said.

As they spoke, Buffy's field of view drifted downward into a large cavern kilometers across. The slayers saw hundreds of missiles, each densely engraved with a spate of mystic runes.

"Ok." Buffy thought. "This all national geographic and boring." Her vision drifted again until it showed a large demon standing in the middle of the room. The demon wasn't attacking. It fact it seemed to be directing the activity in the room.

"I've always suspected that most managers were demons." Buffy thought.

"It's on IX." Buffy heard Surayya say. "The Destroyer wants us to see something on IX."

The vision faded. Buffy found herself still in the shower. The hot water was now running cold. Buffy shivered as she stepped out of the shower and activated her battle armor.

There was a fire under the sand.

The Destroyer had awaked to the sound of a mountain crashing down on his world. He scanned Arrakis and found it full of demons. Millions of those filthy creatures polluted his world and he would not have it. In a fierce and manic rage he reached out with powers from beyond the stars and incinerated them. Two hundred million demons exploded as they were burned alive from the inside. The smoke from their burning corpses could be seen from orbit.

The God-Worm launched itself from beneath the sands of Arrakis and opened its mouth revealing row after row of sharp crystalline teeth. It roared to the heavens above. It's immense length shaking in rage.

The God-Worm senses reached out even to the stars above. It felt the return of an ancient enemy older than the Old Ones. The Destroyer scanned all possible timelines and knew what action he had to take. The Destroyer called out to all his slayers and ordered them into battle.

The dust released from Surayya's asteroid had finally circled the planet. Arrakis was now enveloped in darkness. The dim sky above was as red as the color of dried blood.


	10. Chapter 10

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**BUFFY**  
Oh! So you're like... what are you?

**WOMAN**  
Guardians. Women who want to help and protect you. We forged this centuries ago, halfway around the world.

**BUFFY**  
Hence, the Luxor Casino theme.

**WOMAN**  
Forged there, it was put to use right here...to kill the last pure demon that walked upon the Earth. The rest were already driven under. And then there were men here, and then there were monks. And then there was a town, and now there was you. And the scythe remained hidden.

**BUFFY**  
I don't understand. How is it possible that we didn't know any of this?

**WOMAN**  
We hid, too. We had to until now. We're the last surprise.

**BUFFY**  
Does this mean I can win?

**WOMAN**  
That is really up to you. This is a _**powerful**_ weapon. (hands the scythe back to Buffy)

**BUFFY**  
Yeah.

Drusilla watched the burning planet below. From orbit, the vampire watched millions of fires light the night side surface of Arrakis. Something had reached out to the hundreds of millions of demons that had escaped the Hellmouth and instantly burned them alive. Her demon essence knew of only one force that could do that.

The dreaded Destroyer had returned to the world.

She watched the million of fires burning beneath her with a sick feeling of pure dread. Her eyes were wide with both terror and awe.

"The bad daddy is home." She thought. Drusilla reconsidered her chances of capturing the slayer child. "We won't have any pie today!" She muttered to herself.

Drusilla drew upon her decades of Bene Gesserit training. She mixed some of the blood from the ship stores with the black spice created by the Senior Partner. She drank it as her mind slipped down the hollowed corridors of time. With the spice, Drusilla was able to explore her genetic memories as well as any reverend mother but her experience was different from any reverend mother. The black spice gave her access to the supernatural tinge left in the world from which her memories came. She could see the invisible things that haunted the world of the past. She could see the things that would be missed by the secular eye.

Drusilla was fundamentally different that the prophets of this age. She didn't need spice to see the future. She had always had the sight. The amplified blood hit like a thousand volts of electricity. She twisted backwards in a whole body spasm that left claw marks in the arm rest of her captain's chair. The rising chatter of millions of female voices overwhelmed her. Out of the tide of that hellish choir came the one voice that kept order in the clamor. This was a female personality so strong that it kept the other women in line. Without her friend, Drusilla would have become abomination.

"You are the strangest ancestor I've ever met." Her only friend had said. "I have explored the lives inside of me and you are the only ancestor I've ever met that has ever returned to the world." Drusilla had no idea of the magics involved that allowed her spice aware descendant, who had long ago gone into the sand and turned to dust, to be aware of the fact that she existed and to converse with her inside her mind. Drusilla suspected this was a side effect of being resurrected by the Senior Partner.

"So Alia Atreides, sister of Paul Muad'dib, shall we go the market place and see what we can buy?" Drusilla said to her inner voices in her best sing song voice.

"Yes." Alia answered. "Let's find out what we are." She said in a little girl's voice that sounded much, much older and focused than the child she pretended to be. "Let's go to the market and let's see what we can find."

Drusilla sought to know the source of her powers.

In her memories she saw her sisters and father in the market place. They were just coming from church that evening when a band of ragged strangers passed them. It was Angelus and Darla. Drusilla would see the darkness around the demons. Drusilla went pale with horror at what the fates had shown her. She had seen her own blood soaked body, broken, bruised and dying on a dirty floor. Alia studied the memory through Bene Gesserit eyes. With the black spice, they could both critically examine what she really saw.

The aura that surrounded the demon Angelus and Darla was dark red with tinges of black. Drusilla caught a glimpse of herself in a shop window. Her aura was a radiant green and white. The magics that surrounded her were fundamentally different than the magics that surrounded the demons that murdered her.

That was her first clue.

"Something was using you and you didn't even know it." Alia said. "There are demons and there are slayers, and now we know there is a third force working in the background."

Drusilla jumped to latter memories. She reviewed her attack at sietch Kindle. She saw in her minds eye Buffy wrapped in her white body armor. She could see Buffy's aura glow purple white. The other slayers glowed a deep blue. The magics of their creation were fundamentally different than that of Buffy's'. Of the slayer Motorria, she could see nothing. Something terrible was protecting her. Drusilla focused her demon mind on that scene. Her eye caught sight of the scythe used by the slayers in combat. The scythe held by Surayya glowed green white. It glowed exactly the same way her aura had glowed before Angelus had killed her.

Drusilla opened her eyes in shock.

"The Guardians!" She exclaimed. "My powers come from the Guardians!" That thought left her floored. "My bloodline was destined to become the progenitor of the Kwisatz Haderach. I was murdered before my time and the blood line was cut short.

Alia within chuckled. "Ah, Drusilla you never ask the hard questions such as who taught the Guardians how to build mystical weapons? And what is it that the Senior Partners really want with the human race?" It took Alia within a full moment to make the connection.

"Drusilla!" She screamed in the vampires mind. "The baby is in danger! The scythe was forged by the Senior Partners! It's a Trojan horse!

Drusilla didn't hesitate. She activated the ships engines and dove directly down to the planet.

Around Arrakis the fleet was gathering. Under the command of Arshia a great many slayers from Sietch Kindle and the rest of the scoobies gathered for their assault on IX. A fleet of fifty ships floated in battle formation on the dayside of Arrakis.

Aboard the "Sietch Tabr" Surayya was finishing her battle readiness report. She looked up from the computer screen at Amir. Her eyes scanned the outlines of his face. She was attracted to his light beard and trim figure. Surayya knew what her body was telling her. She slowly stood and stretched giving Amir time to look over her young fit body.

Surayya went to the door that lead to her private quarters. She paused a moment by the door.

"I'm going to lay down for a while." She stopped and waited for Amir to respond. When he didn't Surayya added "Are you going to make me sleep alone?"

It took a moment for Amir to catch on. When he did, his jaw dropped as he scurried over to join Surayya in her quarters.


	11. Chapter 11

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**The future, the past and the present are intertwined, a weave that forms any point in time.**

The Legend of Selim Wormrider

The Senior Partner reviewed the video with interest.

In front of him were multiple screens filled with videos shot from multiple angles. He watched these new slayers with interest.

"There, freeze frame." He said to a nameless technician.

On his screen was an image of the slayer Surayya. On her back was her scythe.

"System, run an inventory check of mystical weapons originating from the home office against the weapon held by the slayer on the main screen." He said to the computer system. Thinking machines had long ago been banned from the empire. The engineers of IX didn't care.

The Senior Partner had his answer in moments. A series of green symbols, superimposed over the image of the scythe flashed on the computer screen.

"That old thing is still around?" The Senior Partner thought to himself. The Senior Partner reviewed the history of the device the slayers carried.

"They have no idea of the scythe's true purpose." He thought to himself. Thousands of years ago the Senior Partners had made a deal with a group of women from Earth. Of course, in those days the Senior Partners presented themselves as emissaries' of light and progress. The women wanted to watch and help the slayer. The Senior Partners agreed. The slayer had to be monitored and controlled. The Senior Partners could not have a wild card like the slayer interfering with their plans.

The Senior Partners were very big on having Apocalypses on their schedule.

To that end, they took a weapon from their arsenal and modified it and gave it to the Guardians. If the slayer ever became a problem for the Senior Partners, they would have a Trojan horse in the scythe to solve that problem. Now there were many slayers and multiple scythes and that damned slayer child.

The Senior Partner rapidly pressed a series of buttons activating a long dormant program. Across the slayer fleet, microscopic runes invisible to the human eye flashed yellow white.

Ancient magics within the scythe activated as it remembered its true purpose.

Motorria was still grieving at what Sineya had told her.

The short time that Sineya was with her comforted her greatly. The first slayer had told her great and terrible things were on the way. Some would survive. Many would not. Sineya told her sadly that someone she loved would be taken from the world.

Motorria rubbed her belly as she stood at the mouth of the sietch. She watched Sineya as she walked away. After long minutes, Sineya was lost behind a set of desert dunes. After a while Motorria returned to her favorite place near the back of the sietch and waited for her guest to arrive.

Three minutes later Motorria could hear the scream of jets as Drusilla's ship touched down.

"I'm a busy girl today." Motorria thought to herself.

She was fast. Drusilla was out of her ship and into the sietch in less than three seconds. Motorria felt her vampire presence a fraction of a moment before she appeared. The sentries on watch had fired lasers that could cut through rock. Drusilla had seen this moment in her visions. She dodged the lasers easily as she jammed her fingers into the rock surface of the cave and scuttled along the ceiling of the sietch.

Motorria sharply inhaled as she supercharged her nervous system. She awakened the memory of Willow Rosenberg in her mind. Motorria's eyes went as black as an open grave. Sparks of blue white power arced from her finger tips.

Drusilla dropped from the ceiling directly in front of her. Lightening jumped from Motorria and scorching the place where Drusilla was a fraction of a second ago. The vampire tucked and rolled as she slid past Motorria.

"What the…?" Motorria muttered as she did a half twist and fired at Drusilla again. This time she hit. A huge chunk of Drusilla's chest was blown away and splattered the wall with blood and organs. Drusilla turned and face Motorria with a huge gaping hole in her chest.

"Dearie, that _hurt_." She said. Drusilla grabbed Motorria's scythe from the cave floor. The edges of the scythe's blade were glowing with a faint yellow light.

"Everything in my head is singing…" She said to no one in particular as her yellow demon eyes scanned over the scythe. Drusilla turned her eyes to stare at Motorria.

"What will your mummy sing when they find your body?" She said. Motorria went cold.

"I will never let anything hurt the child." Drusilla said. The tone in which she said it forced Motorria to start a mentat prime computation. Drusilla had not come for her. She had come for the scythe which was now glowing softly. The Willow in her mind acted first.

"_Revele" _The Willow memory spoke through Motorria.

An expanding image appeared from the scythe. It was a pale almost holographic view of a demon that looked exactly like the one in the vision the God-Worm had sent the slayers only hours ago.

"A Kleynach demon." The memory of Willow thought. Motorria understood. A Kleynach demon could move between dimensions without being conjured. Motorria examined the hands of the monster. She spotted it easily.

"The Band of Blacknill." She thought. "It permits the user to travel between this word.."

"and the home office." Drusilla finished her thought. She had become quite good at using her visions.

"A Senior Partner?" Motorria said dumbfounded. Now the pieces were fitting together. From the return of Drusilla to a Hellmouth opening on Arrakis and what Surayya kept calling the blood storm. She couldn't believe she was just now seeing the connections.

"We are way behind the curve here." Motorria thought.


	12. Chapter 12

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

The defiling of a god is an ancient human tradition. Why should I be an exception?

-Leto II

She floated in a sea of memories. Motorria was in her second hour of spice induced meditation. Drusilla had left the sietch a long time ago. Motorria was hunting knowledge of the past. She was hunting knowledge of the Senior Partners and of the women known as the Guardians. She had contacted the fleet in orbit just catching them before they made the jump to IX.

"Buffy, tell me about the Guardians." She had asked. Buffy could tell her nothing. Even though Buffy had met a woman claiming to be a Guardian she had come to learn nothing about them.

"She just showed up one day while I was fighting the First, gave me the scythe and then got herself murdered. The whole thing seemed kind of _ex machina_ to me." She said.

"Thanks Buffy."

Motorria believed the only way to find out the true abilities of the scythe was to explore her pre-born memories. She was the only one that could do this right now. She was the only Reverend Mother Slayer with access to spice.

What terrified her were the possible effects of the spice on her unborn son. There were multiple scythes throughout the slayers orbiting above and throughout the slayer fleet fighting unknown monsters elsewhere deep in the galaxy.

They simply didn't have _time_ to find someone else. The slayers had to know what they were dealing with now.

Her cells were giving her answers. She spoke with her blood and the memories stored within. Holland Manners once said. "We are in the hearts and minds of every single person on Earth. We endure, we just go on."

How were they in the hearts and minds of Man?

People die but the blood goes on by the act of procreation. In her mind's eye Motorria could see the swirling of the double helix molecule that was human DNA. Motorria knew that the flesh was how mystical forces were generated, harnessed and released into the universe. The energies used to bind the Senior Partners to this dimension had to be generated by the flesh. If she could break that connection, she could banish the senior partners forever.

Motorria had a precise inventory of every cell in her body. Her training as a Bene Gesserit by Leto and her exposure to the mystic spice secreted by the God-Slayer allowed her to view herself at the molecular level. Because it soaked every part of her Motorria knew the answer had to be in the blood.

"It's always the blood. Blood is life. Blood keeps you warm, keeps you hard, keeps you other than dead." Spike had said thousands of years ago to the original scoobies as they prepared to confront Glory. Motorria smiled to herself. Someone in that room was one of her ancient ancestors.

Motorria slowed her breathing down even further to quiet her mind. She wanted to hear what her body was trying to say. By a sheer act of will she forced her brain to produce Theta waves that put her into a light REM trance.

"I have something you don't." A voice said to her. It was her son. She could feel his presence flitting around her. "I have Muad'dib genes.  
Compare the "X" chromosomes'.' He urged.

Motorria could feel how each gene on each chromosome encoded for proteins. It was like reading Braille. She ran her mind across the rough pattern of molecules and came across genes that didn't encode for anything. They were just there. These strange genes were missing from both Buffy's DNA and her own. She was sure other women had the strange genes for now it seemed that they were missing in slayers.

"And witches mommy, don't forget witches."

"Shouldn't you be somewhere gestating?"

"I am. But you woke me up."

"Go back to sleep sweetie. I'll try not to disturb you, much."

Motorria shifted her consciousness as to not disturb the child any further. Something profound arose from the sea of memories. She remembered a classroom in Sunnydale High, a classroom that sat directly above a Hellmouth.

Motorria watched herself perform incantations to the Goddess using the scythe as a sacred object.

"That's not me, that's Willow." Motorria corrected herself. The identification was that strong. Motorria watched fascinated as Willow used the scythe as the focus of her spell. The scythe flared as white light poured out of it.

"Ah, my Goddess…!" Willow exclaimed in ecstasy as she plopped over to her side with a huge grin on her face.

The vision faded.

Her brain woke her up. It had urgent information it wanted to tell her. Motorria's mouth felt dry. She motioned for a fremen to bring her water. She used her mentat training to put the pieces together one at a time.

"Fact." She said to herself. "Man is evil because of DNA. Fact, that evil is harnessed as a mystical force by the Senior Partners. Fact, the Senior Partners created the scythe and are connected to it." Motorria stopped for a moment as she came to a mentat prime computation. "The scythe can harness and unleash all the evil in the human race." Motorria stopped and took an honest appraisal of herself. "Well, I don't feel particularly evil right now, so I guess the effect is cumulative." She went to her next conclusion which changed everything.

"The scythe is a lens. She thought to herself. "It can focus mystical energies including the energies that keep the Senior Partners connected to this dimension."

Motorria keyed a nearby radio. She made contact with the fleet. It took a moment for all the ships to join the conference. Surayya was the last one to join them. She sounded winded and out of breath like she was in the middle of a heavy duty work out.

"The scythe is connected to all the evil of the Human race. That evil is basic to our genetics. It is absent in witches and slayers. The scythe is a compensation for that. I think the scythe was built to turn slayers to the dark side. I don't mean Faith dark, I mean flaming cities, blood in the streets, rivers clogged with bodies, genocide dark. So, you know, there's that."

There was some rumbling over the speakers.

"I think I can fix this without an assault on IX. Motorria said. "I'm going to use the scythe to generate a signal that blocks access to this dimension for the Senior Partners." There were grasps over the radio. Motorria didn't have time to listen. She turned off the radio and assembled her ingredients. When she finished, she had four crystals arranged in a semi-circle around the scythe. She repeated the spell spoken by Willow thousands of years ago with certain changes in the wording.

The scythe flashed. White light poured out of it, paused then collapsed back into the scythe. Motorria growled as she fought the darkness that flowed out the scythe. Her eyes were as black as night.

Something was wrong.

The Senior Partner felt his hold on the Kleynach demon weakening. His view of the room wavered. He could barely control the limbs of the demon he inhabited.

"What blasphemy is this?" He screamed. The Senior Partner didn't know why this was happening bet he knew how it would end. He panicked.

"Launch the weapons now!" He ordered.

"Master?"

"All of them!" He screamed. Technicians scurried to perform final checks. Minutes later a signal was given. From the moons of IX, hundreds of missiles covered with mystic runes launched themselves. A moment later they all made the jump to hyperspace.

The connection died. The Senior Partner lost his foot hold on this universe. Deep within IX a Kleynach demon woke from a long sleep. It no longer had someone in its head telling it what to do. After realizing that it was free to do as it willed it started killing the humans.

Across Arrakis and deep into space there was a blood storm. Deep inside the bulk of the human race molecules shifted as something tiny and eternal fought to retain its connection to the Senior Partners. In the end the molecules failed. Evil still existed but now it was no longer fuel.

Motorria stood and waddled to the entrance of the sietch. She wanted a bird's eye view of the end of the world. Lisa caught the expression on her face and knew the time had come for the thing they had dreaded. It was time for them to experience the thing told to them by Sineya. Lisa placed an arm under Motorria and helped her get a good view of the Arrakis desert beyond.

"You don't say much do you?" Motorria said to Lisa after she had sat down. Lisa was about to answer when the missiles hit.

The blast produced a purple then yellow then red light that lit up the sky beyond the horizon. Seconds later the blast wave hit. Motorria could smell sand and ash and spice and burning flesh. The magics engraved on the missiles produced a blue white ball of light that hung in the sky for an unnaturally long time and all the while there was a persistent buzzing like a billion chainsaws tearing away at meat.

The missiles had landed directly on the Destroyer. This was the same magics used by the Old Ones millions of years ago refined and amplified by the Senior Partners.

This time it worked.

For the longest time Motorria sat starring out into the desert. She didn't even know she was crying. There were tracks of tears on her face. Lisa stood next to her.

Neither of them could think of anything to say.

After a while it was Lisa that said "God is dead."


	13. Chapter 13

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

"I don't understand how this all happens, how we go through this, I mean I knew her and then she's, there's just a body, I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead, it's stupid, it's mortal and stupid…"

Anya, "The Body"

BTVS S05E16

A line of women stood in the sand.

Surayya, Buffy, Lisa and a host of other slayers stood at the edge of a smoking pit nearly a kilometer wide and well over five hundred meters deep. Splattered along the sides of the pit were chunks of sandworm flesh.

"God can't die." Surayya said as she desperately tried to figure out what just happened here.

"You're in denial." Buffy said.

"No I'm not." Surayya responded.

The line of women in the sand were in the company of multiple aircraft that hovered overhead and Fish speaker devices that watched them from orbit. Despite the array of high definition sensors they had in the scoobies fleet, the slayers wanted to see the evidence with their own eyes.

"Motorria told me that Sineya came to see her just before…" Surayya choked for a moment. "Just before the Destroyer was attacked."

Buffy listened to the aircraft overhead as she waited for Surayya to finish.

"Sineya told her that this was going to happen." Surayya said. "The Destroyer knew this was a possibility and he did nothing!" Surayya was angry. She felt betrayed. How could God die and leave her all alone?

Buffy understood what Surayya was feeling. She was dealing with her own grief.

"I'm sure the Destroyer didn't choose to undergo a violent and painful death just to make you feel bad." Buffy said. "We're soldiers on the front line of a nightly war." She said quoting Giles. "People get hurt. Shit happens." Surayya didn't hear her.

"How many?" Surayya asked "How many have died because of us?" Surayya looked at Buffy. She had real anger in her voice. We lost fifteen hundred at Tailos Three and no telling how many in the fleet. Yesterday three slayers died because of Drusilla."

"What about the trillions saved when you stopped Dawn's energy from tearing the galaxy apart? Or the fact that you stopped the blood storm before it even started?" Buffy said as she reached over and held Surayya close to her. "We're doing good work here." Buffy said softy to her. "Don't forget that."

Surayya pulled away. Desert sand blew across her face. Her eyes stared long and cold at the scene of devastation around her. She seemed hypnotized by the curls of gray white smoke still flowing outward from the pit. She was focused inward as if performing some long mental calculation. Her features shifted as she found her answer.

"We're going to save the Destroyer." Surayya said flatly.

"Uh, look around." Buffy said puzzled. "Total destruction pretty much a done deal. You have to let him go." Surayya didn't answer her immediately but when she did she said "You didn't feel that way when Willow brought you back." That stopped Buffy cold.

Surayya frowned as she realized something she had bottled up deep within her. Her expression shifted as her face twisted into a display of grief that nearly broke Buffy's heart.

"I couldn't save him!" Surayya said. "I couldn't save Leto! He was murdered before we got back from Tailos Three."

Buffy remembered her own father's death. She was well into her sixties when it happened. Giles had died of old age in the early part of the twenty-first century. To this day, if the right memory came back, she would find herself devastated. The pain was still just as sharp.

Buffy sighed.

"Ok, we're going to bring the Destroyer back." She said. "Any ideas?" She asked. Buffy could smell the sharp cinnamon scent from the hundreds of kilograms of burning spice at the bottom of the pit.

Surayya tapped her earpiece. That brought Motorria on-line. Motorria was still back at the sietch. She did not want to travel out into the heat.

"Moto, any thoughts?" Surayya asked.

There was static in the earpiece. After a while, Motorria's voice came through crystal clear.

"Sineya came to see me just before…" Motorria paused as the grief over took her. "Just before the attack. She told me this may happen. She told me that the slayers have a secret power beyond even the Destroyer. Sineya believed we could use that power just in case this happened."

"What is that power?" Surayya asked." Motorria told her. Surayya smiled.

"Message received." Surayya said as she disconnected the call. Buffy waited for the other shoe to drop. She had overheard some of the conversation.

"So what did she say?" Buffy asked. "What did Sineya tell her, what is our secret power?" Buffy asked.

"The smallest part of infinity is infinite. Any part of the divine is wholly divine. One spark is the same as a conflagration. Our secret power is this, we're girls, we can give birth. The energy of the Destroyer is locked away within the slayer. I'm going to release that energy and restore the destroyer.

"It's funny." Surayya said. "We never even knew his real name."

"You can ask him when we bring him back." Buffy said.

Surayya explained her plan in further detail as the two women turned and walked back to their ship.


End file.
